Waahhhh!

The end of the holiday weekend - boo!
We spent the day with Grandpa Flip and Grandma Rita and gave thanks for family and Boston Market and really good pies from Ralph's. It was a very easy dinner that satisfied in the traditional way. Theron and Grandpa got in several pillow fights and even after a bloody nose Theron decided it was worth the risk to keep going, but no more blood was shed.
The drive up was so very beautiful. It rained the day before but Thursday was sunny and clear and all along the coast we saw flock after flock of magnificent pelicans in formation and when we were finally in the hills we saw the happy cows. Theron adapted the Richard Shindell song were were listening to (Are You Happy Now) to Are You a Happy Cow? and we sang it loud making the 'You' a moo.


Some of you are probably wondering who fed the ants while we were gone? Well, before Friday I would have said How sweet of you to worry, but our ants are full, thank you very much. They'll be fine for a day. Then we come back and find the greedy little bastards eating stuff they don't even like, such as sugar. Since when??!! Oh, well, Grandpa Flip told us about lemon-scented Raid and Ash says he would spray it even if we didn't have ants because it smells so good. So take that.

Halloween!

Here's our little pirate. Earlier in the day he had a beard and moustache. I carved five pumpkins. I really tried to make sure that black widow had eight legs, but it's still scary, eh? To the left is our little Obama-lantern.I hate that this is hard to see, I just couldn't get a good picture with the bats in the air.

Theron designed the cyclops.
We went out trick or treating right at dark, saw some amazing displays, but in the end we only probably hit about 10 houses. This is what I don't understand about this kid. In our day you got as much free candy as possible! After about 6 houses Theron wanted to look in the bag to see if he had enough. Enough? Can you still carry that bag with one hand? Then, no, you don't have enough. In our day we filled that bag and there was good stuff that parents would never allow now - pomegranates, home-made candy apples and popcorn balls. You had to get as much as possible because it faciliates a successful sort: there's the GOOD stuff, the stuff to trade, and then the pile for Dad, because just like earthworms on the forest floor, Dads are the mulchers of Candyland. They eat the boring candy, the black candy, and anything else disgusting, and they like it because they know, like everyone else except my son, that nothing tastes better than free candy. After the sort you ate candy everyday at a rationed rate so that you were still eating it when the Christmas tree went up. Ashley just thinks Theron's never been candy-deprived so he can't appreciate it. Another parenting failure.

Ashley went to the school costume parade. Theron appears at about 16 or 17 seconds into it.